Herbert Vogel, an 82-year-old retired postal clerk, and his wife, Dorothy, 72, a former librarian, spent about 45 years and their life savings collecting Minimalist, Conceptual and post-1960s art. In 1992 the couple pledged more than 2,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Now, having amassed more art than could be exhibited in most museums, they will distribute 2,500 more pieces to institutions across the country.The initiative — the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: 50 Works for 50 States — is being carried out with help from the National Gallery, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.“We’ve recently stopped going to galleries, we just can’t keep up anymore,” said Mrs. Vogel, who lives in Manhattan with her husband. “But we’re still adding, although not a lot.”Among the artists represented in the Vogel collection are Will Barnet, Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Edda Renouf, Pat Steir, Richard Tuttle and Robert Watts. Since 1992, when the couple owned 2,300 works, the collection has grown to 4,000 pieces.Realizing that this would be an unwieldy gift for any one institution, the Vogels have for seven years worked with Ruth Fine, a National Gallery curator, on a plan to disperse the collection.“There was always the sense that it was too large for the National Gallery,” Ms. Fine said.The Vogels (no relation to this writer) were inspired by the Kress collection, which placed its old master paintings in institutions across the country from around 1929 to 1961. They have decided to distribute groupings of 50 works each — kind of snapshot Vogel collections — to 50 museums. The list of recipients is being finalized.Ten museums have been chosen so far: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge, the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas in Austin, and the Seattle Art Museum. Each will receive the art by July.By the end of 2008, 20 more museums will receive art, and by 2009 the final 20 groups should be in their new homes.The museums chosen have either shown the couple’s collection, borrowed works from it or are institutions where the Vogels have personal contacts.The National Endowment for the Arts is financing a book about the collection and its gifts. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is paying to pack and ship the works; it will also sponsor a Web site — www.vogel50x50.org — about the minicollections.Each gift comes with two stipulations: The museum must exhibit the works within five years (with exceptions made when expansion or renovation closes a building), and the works may be transferred only if they are given to another institution as a group. Reflecting on how the art world has grown over the last 45 years, Mrs. Vogel said: “It’s too overwhelming. I don’t know if we could do what we did now. It was a lot easier in those days. We just bought what we liked.”